40 | NOVEMBER 21 • 2019 

Coming
Full
Circle

The Friendship Circle 

celebrates 25 years of making 

the world a better place by 

launching an endowment fund. 

B

assie and Rabbi Levi 
Shemtov knew from the 
start of their marriage that 
their lives would be dedicated to 
making the world a better place. 
That commitment to each other, 
and their faith, led them to cre-
ating a circle of friendship that 
now encompasses thousands of 
individuals across the globe. 
From young ages, Bassie and 
Levi grew up under the teach-
ings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, 
Rabbi Menachem Mendel 
Schneerson, of righteous mem-
ory, whose philosophy was of 
making the world a better place 
by revealing the good in the 
world. Under this philosophy, 
the good, or the special, can be 
found within the soul of each 
person. 
“
Our outreach began as the 
application of this philosophy of 
finding the good in the world,”
 
Levi says. “
The idea is that we 
are not reaching out to someone 
who is far and different to bring 
them back in, but instead we are 
reaching within to help them 
find their value in the world.”
Sam and Carol Sobel wanted 
to honor the memory of their 
late son, Daniel, who died in 
1993 at the age of 28. They want-
ed to create a place where those 
struggling with addiction or 
other isolating conditions could 
find the support and compan-
ionship their son had received 
from a local rabbi. The Daniel 
Sobel Friendship House opened 
its doors in 1994, bringing Bassie 
and Levi to Detroit as emissaries 
of the Lubavitch movement to 
start the program and develop 
new ones. 
“
I began working with 
Friendship House and had a 
passion to help those struggling 
with addiction and mental ill-
ness,”
 Levi says. “We were also 
committed to finding our mis-
sion in the community.”
Bassie and Levi began meeting 
with local community leaders 

and simply asking, “Who needs 
friends?”
 
“We defined real friendship as 
when people see each other not 
for their labels or exterior but for 
the beauty that is within,”
 Levi 
says. “
One message that kept 
recurring was that people with 
special needs needed friends.”
The Shemtovs needed to find 
a way to create friendships to 
support those with special needs 
and their families. Bassie started 
gathering local teens to volun-
teer and befriend youth with 
special needs. They called these 
friends “
Buddies.”
 
The Friendship Circle was 
founded in 1994 with just a 
handful of volunteers taking 
teens to meet with their Buddies 
each week in homes across the 
community. Their mission was a 
circle of friends that would help 
those with special needs be seen 
for their value in this world. 
“We thought these teens were 
doing us such a huge favor by 
giving their time,”
 Levi says. “
One 
day a parent asked why there 
was a delay in finding their teen 
a ‘
Buddy’
 to work with and it 
was only because we didn’
t have 
enough drivers. The parent glad-
ly offered to drive.”
 
It was then that the Shemtovs 
realized the true value of friend-
ship was circling back and 
not only benefiting those with 
special needs. These teens’
 lives 
were being impacted as they 
found their meaning. As teenag-
ers came to volunteer, they were 
finding this was the only place 
they could go that no one was 
looking at them for how they 
look or dress, their grades or 
what kind of house they live in. 
“
It was then there was a shift,”
 
Bassie says. “We realized there 
was another population who 
could benefit from being seen 
for who they truly were and not 
their exterior trappings. That 
was everyone else.”
As Friendship Circle grew, it 

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS